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The Broken Trust Model of Policing Police
October 2020
The Broken Trust Model of Policing Police.
— Richard Stallman
This is an email I sent to some Boston officials
Thank you. I hope you won't mind if I raise another pertinent
point — from penology.
Changing people's behavior with punishments is most effective when
punishment is frequent, certain, and rapid. Even a smaller punishment
can do the job under these circumstances.
Justice demands punishing murderous cops, but that is not an effective
way to change the cops' culture of impunity. Murderous cops have only
a small chance of being punished. When that does happen, it is long
delayed. And the occasions for this punishment happen (fortunately)
only rarely in the Boston area.
By contrast, if we can arrange to make punishment likely and rapid
when cops make false accusations, there will be a lie to punish every
week.
If Boston cops saw a dozen Boston cops each year punished for lying,
they could not avoid thinking, "If I keep framing people, I'm going to
get caught. I had better go straight."
We can call this the "broken trust model of policing police." ;-}.
Unlike the unjust "broken windows model", this does not involve
exaggerated punishments for insignificant misdeeds. Framing someone
is not as bad as murder, but it is quite bad.
Copyright 2020 Richard M Stallman
Released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivatives 4.0 license